


Experiment

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Female Character of Color, Gen, Paragon Commander Shepard, Renegade Commander Shepard, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1974867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra knows she's an experiment.  She doesn't want to know how Miranda would define a <i>successful</i> experiment.</p><p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: experiment</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experiment

Sometimes she can't help but stare at herself in the mirror of her cabin, the flickering fluorescent lighting garish and glaring, washing out her golden skin and casting the deep blackened ridges of scar tissue in stark relief.  
  
"Commander Cassandra Shepard," she tells her reflection and her voice still sounds the same. "Five-nine-two-three-A-C-two-eight-two-six." She watches her mouth move as she shapes the words, repeats what every captured soldier is trained to say. Says it again and again as the red of the cybernetics flashes and catches her eye.

It hurts when she presses her fingers against the edges. Hot, swollen under her fingertips, like a welt. There's no blood when she inspects and she's not stupid enough to give in and start digging her nails in to see if blood will come out or if it'll be that milky-white substance that splattered out of the geth. Chakwas would freak, everyone would freak and she can already feel their eyes on her the whole time because she's not right, she's not her, she _died_ and she still wakes and wonders why there's anything left of her throat. She doesn't wear helmets anymore unless she has to or the claustrophobia sets in. Her own panicked breathing and then trying to get it off and it was so dark, so overwhelming dark, a void swallowing her and then—

She's seen enough burned up corpses to know what she looked like. One of the guys on a squad with her said it looked like beef jerky, some burned up corpse they found and all those desiccated salarians and turians back when she was still Cassandra Shepard, the first human Spectre. Meat turns her stomach now in a way it never did before and it's like being under a microscope. Miranda has to know, she was meant to bring her back exactly as she was but she died. You can't bring someone back. There's a line: life and death and you only cross once for good. She shouldn't be here.

Are there more of her? Cerberus has done some horrible things in the past, enough that to make her sick, the rachni and the things like the thorian creepers, what they've done to Alliance soldiers and Miranda is proof that there's some really fucked up shit that Cassandra wouldn't really have considered before. Bring her back. She heard the logs and it's staggering, all that money for one woman, to cheat death but sometimes she imagines the failures. Bits and pieces – what few were still left – in labs somewhere. In case something goes wrong because she was good and fair and this goddamn paragon and now she just wants to do the job, wants to crawl into a hole and never come out as the scars spread out, a network of little fractures that won't hold forever. She's short with people and sharp, shoots first and doesn't care.

Doesn't really feel much of anything unless she's repeating her name, rank and number over and over to a reflection that isn't her, pressing her fingers into the scars.

She doesn't have the stomach to ever ask Miranda what she might mean when she thinks of the word success.


End file.
